Wow, so much thought has been put into this thread!

Here's my short set of suggestions:
1) Show the average energy price for the last 24 hours in the energy trading market screen. The buy/sell price are prepopulated to list at the average price for the last 24 hours. (If a limit buy is entered above the lowest seller's price, the excess crowns are refunded. This currently is the case) This should help stabilize energy prices considerably because people will have more information about what a fair price is.

2) Increase the energy trading fee to 10%. This makes it considerably harder to profit by pushing up energy prices. It also makes energy less attractive as a hedge against inflation because you will pay the trading fee when going back to crowns. The downside to this change is it would increase the incentive to trade outside the market, which already seems to be happening quite a bit. But, I think for most people the convenience of the market would win out, just as most items are traded through the auction house now rather than trade chat.

3) Add the ability to list CE in the auction house in any size blocks. This would provide another mechanism to regulate prices and compete with the main energy market. This would help reduce the number of people offering to sell energy in trade chat in smaller blocks than 100 as well.

IGN: Malyce

As far as blind auctioning, I think it would seriously complicate energy trading beyond the scope of casual players to particpate in effectively. This would mean a transfer of wealth from the naive players to those who knew how to exploit the system.

@Maberiku

Of course.
i can proof it:

The System shown in post #134 can be funded by advertising (post #176).
(you only need to punch those numbers in)

There Rings currently charges roughly 30¢ (dollar) for 100 Cristal Energy ( $0.3/100CE).
(i.e. right know they want 3¢ as elevator fee.)

A typical European(German) online-newspaper charges 50€($73)/1000 views for a medium rectangle 300x250 pixel advertising[1].
Consider 2 medium rectangle banners on every loading screen.
Due to the short viewtime (30s) Three Rings can only charge $25/1000 views.
This is 0.025c per view and 0.05¢/player for every elevator use.
Lets target a price of 6000Cr/100CE as proposed in #134.

Tier 1 has 8 elevators in total. Hence Three Rings get 40¢ per player completing a run on tier 1,
so they can drop crowns equivalent to 40¢ and allow a player to change to CE provident by them.
This makes 40¢ * (100CE/30¢) * (6000Cr/100Ce) = 8000Cr for Tier 1

Tier 2 has 10 elevator in total.
This makes 50¢ * (100Ce/30¢) * (6000Cr/100Ce) = 10000Cr for Tier 2

Tier 3 has 12 elevator in total.
This makes 60¢ * (100Ce/30¢) * (6000Cr/100Ce) = 12000Cr for Tier 2

If we consider the system proposed in #134 with the restrictions to the purchase of energy and compare the numbers in #134 to the numbers above we see that Three Rings could easily apply the changes and even make some money with free players. Of course it would be advisable to offer a add free version (not a free add free version) to make everybody happy.
QED.

However: Fine tuning can be tricky.
Its hard to say how restrictive the market should be and how much Cristal Energy should be put on the market.
It all depends on how much fun the players have.

But: This System has the potential to stabilize the market and let the game expend.

[1] http://www.hinnerk.de/fileadmin/pdf/Mediadaten_hinnerk_online.pdf

Another book by Deecee
===============
you said "Plagiarizing will not be accepted." I'm not about to read 200 replies.. then again I don't want the reward either soooo.. here b my two cents that ain't worth a dime - yet.. is priceless.

Simple solution imo. Take control of the market prices away from the player, add a crown sink that has value to both newbs and veterans alike, crisis averted - problem solved - happy times. There are those that want to buy and those that want to sell. If you want to buy.. you select how many multiples of 100 you'd like to purchase for say... 5k cr / 100 CE > click the buy button, go on with your life. If you just dropped $10 on 3500 CE and you realize oh crap I need crowns for the Auction House or whoa dude that 4* recipe is 10k... then you go and do the reverse.. how many multiples of CE do you want to sell at 100 ce / 5k cr > click the sell button, move on with your life. The market should be run by the system/game servers/client/God/a fu**in squirrel named Jeff, anything but the players - because the players will ruin it for other players.

BIG ISSUE: No viable crown sink for veterans. The Auction House introduced a constant medium for people to sell all their goodies and the crowns just started rollin' in. Well.. Vets with great gear don't really have a need to put those crowns back into the AH (except people who play the buy low/sell high game all day or hunt for way under priced UV's to use/sell). With that said, a large portion of players A. bought up CE with those crowns to rage-craft or B. bought up CE with those crowns just for the sake of converting it to CE because guess what WE DON'T NEED crowns nearly as bad. What we do need is 12k CE for that elusive max UV we seek or 3k CE to craft our bomber set because swords just ain't cuttin' it anymore (see what I did thar?). Of course what I'm saying isn't true for everyone in the history of ever, but it rings pretty true for a lot of people.

Just have to face it folks.. the game was designed this way for a reason. With players in control of the market (both supply and pricing), the devs actually benefit until mass numbers of people get pissed and quit. Why? Because CE doesn't grow on trees as most of us are aware I think. The lower the supply(or higher the demand) the more expensive 100 CE gets, the more expensive the more impossible it becomes to play for free, the more impossible it becomes to play for free the more likely people will break down and buy CE with real $.

The problem the devs face (and have faced at a team meeting in the past I'm sure) is if its a fixed market like I suggest then people will find a way (aka jelly runs) to basically have infinite play time and make a small profit each trip. I hate to be redundant, but the lack of a crown sink is the main issue. There needs to be a tempting but optional crown sink present in the game. Why tempting? for vets, why optional? so noobs dont have to do it. When CE was 4k:100 is was difficult for newbs but not impossible and vets kinda had it on easy street with jelly runs and selling expensive items. Now however its way in favor of veteran players EXCEPT of course for rage crafters as that particular hobby is becoming more and more expensive. You can still barely make a profit with jelly runs doing depths 9-16 but just barely and that's only if little to no revives take place. New players are all but screwed until they hit JK and soon .. not even running jelly palace will provide break even results.

possible crown sinks:
- convert the slot upgrades / heat amp to crowns not CE.
- add new buffs i.e. Luck buff for UVs, Luck buff for dropped items, 10% move speed / damage / defense.
- purchasable titles such as Deecee the eMillionaire, Sinxeno the Prophet, Eurydice the AHPatchHateSponge.
- purchasable outfit slots so players can "save" an outfit and give it a name > i.e. < here's my "Slime Slayer" setup it consists of Skolver Coat / Cap, Barbarous thorn shield, Gran Faust, Ash of Agni and over here is my "Let's Go Clubbin" outfit (cuz of Vanadukes mace.. get it?) - It consists of Vog Set, Grey Owlite, Divine Avenger, Shivermist.
- item enhancements such as Runes that could supplement UV's or be added to a vanilla item.

Lastly.. for all we know things are working fine for the devs.. maybe they aren't losing money. Maybe the game isn't dying, it could be growing and it seems like death because veterans are quitting - which might not matter to their income reports. Time will tell.

Ugh.. I dunno that's it.. I'm tired of thinking.

IMO the biggest problem is that there isn't much of an endgame crown sink. Maybe something like a slot machine? IDK. I do know that I convert as much of my crowns into CE because CE is helluva lot more useful than crowns. Unfortunately, I haven't a clue what crown sink we should have. Although gambling might be the best bet.

I think the system is just broken. There's very little that can be done in the user side of things. The few extremely rich people who control the economy are not going to stop as long as the are making a profit. There are things on the developer side that can help. Some of these ideas may have been brought up by others but here goes.

1) a simple developer side quick fix would be to allow users to see more than the best 5 current offers to buy and sell ce. In the current system rich users can use the limit information to make it hard for walls to be taken down. It also allows walls to be easily built because not everyone has been keeping a track on the economy to know the wall is actually a glass window in many cases.

2) a more hardcore fix would be for OOO to limit each user to one ce market transaction at a time and tax the transaction posting (get rid of the fees after sales) according to size. First 300 ce would be free then impose a 1% tax increase for every 100 ce extra posted so a 400 ce transaction will have a 1% tax, 500 ce 2% tax, etc. It becomes unprofitable extremely fast to create walls. OOO should also infuse small amounts of ce into the market at a regulated price to help prevent inflation.

There is a simple answer to the current energy costs that we have, albeit it is not an answer that Three Rings would accept, due to the fact that they benefit more from energy costs being higher (as this encourages others to buy energy with real money, rather than letting others buy it).

My answer to this is to simply have CE drop in dungeons in small amounts. Now, this might seem counter-intuitive, to an extent, but hear me out.

There are three major consumers of CE which are the following:

1. Crafters
2. Raiders
3. Sellers

1. Crafters, on the majority, buy and use most of the energy that they obtain for, as their name suggests, crafting. Everyone is this, at some point, unless you manage to have an ungodly amount of crowns, and you somehow manage to buy the vog cub stuff that's been up on the AH now and then. Discounting that, everyone needs energy to craft their goods, and, as the system is as it is, energy is completely necessary to the game to buy and manage. Without an overhaul of the basic system (and unrealistic proposal at best) this core group will remain consistent.

What my suggestion (allow CE to drop) does for this group is simple; the CE market could be completely circumvented, or, as CE would be diluted, it would become affordable for crafters to actually buy their energy. Think of it this way:

If a complete dungeon run of tier 2 (the most commonly played tier, as of now, as evidenced by market trends, and how fast 2 star gear flies off the shelves) only netted you 5 CE, that would be more than enough for those that are unwilling to buy CE from both the market and from three rings. If a tier 2 dungeon run netted you 5 CE, then, at the minimum, it would still take a single person 60 runs (read: 2 months of running) to attain a single 4 star item. Not staggering, is it? BUT, the best way to look at this is that this is only for normal game play, and a reward given for more full runs of a tier. Likewise, this could promote singular guild pooling of obtained energy, but I'll leave the long-term repercussions for another section of this post. Also, this would make certain areas more valuable that currently (at least imo) are not overly such, letting the Crafters actually want to play them, rather than to just skip them (this will also be detailed later).

That said, with at just a small amount of CE obtained, that might just be the edge that some need to push them to buy -more-. As much as that might not make sense, think of it this way: If you have worked your Bushy Tail's off with your friend to finally obtain that level 10 4 star gear that you needed to upgrade for three weeks, and are currently sitting at 695 energy, your friend might be more willing to part with their small amount of energy (5), which would bring you up to your 700. Well that doesnt do much good, since you need your 800 to craft. How many people will instantly go to the market and say "to heck with it", and just buy the energy, especially if it's reduced from where it is now? I know I sure would, if it got me a 5 star quicker! As of right now, it's a darn hard decision to make, with energy still rising.

That said, even small amounts of energy would be beneficial for the groups of genuine casual players.

2. Raiders are the second group of people; they are those that buy energy to play forever. These players calculate how much money it costs to complete a run, make the run, buy more energy, and repeat until they cannot continue, or literally fall asleep at the keyboard (my roommate is one of these, and has done both, before). That said, the whole point of consistent raiding is to build up enough "extra" energy (whatever is left over after your runs) for a "free" run, which becomes pure profit (in tier 2, this is one time in every 5 runs, discounting energy spent for deaths or gates). This profit is therefore reinvested into energy for crafting, or otherwise, and the system is repeated ad infinium.

If CE were to drop, these would be the greatest consumers of the populous of this system, albeit they are truly the smallest population (the casual players far outweigh these). Upon obtaining even small amounts of CE, it allows them to buy more, do more, and, ultimately once they are done, actually begin to sell the energy that they farm as "extra". Eventually, these runners will turn into sellers, and the job propagates, as others take up the raiding mantle. Still, the ex-raiders who turn seller begin to dilute the seller market, which leads me to...

3. Sellers. Sellers are an interesting group to me, mostly because this doesn't describe my own playstyle at all. Sellers are the ones that actually -provide- the energy; those who buy the energy from 3 rings and sell it. These are the people that do two things; buy energy, and sell it for an absurd amount of crowns (at current prices, those that spend 20 bucks on energy for the 7500, if they were to sell the energy individually, they would make around 477750 crowns per transaction); and there are those who play the markets; they will offer to buy low, and then sell for a profit when prices raise. These are the shrewd merchants of SK, and part of the reason that the economy both works, and are part of what makes the economy what it is right now.

Admittedly, this system hurts this group the most. This system actually would spawn more sellers, though, as with supply and demand's basic principles, since more energy is available, energy costs would lower, and thusly the profit margin would diminish. Still, prices should end up regulating, and even if the prices drop down back to 4k (a much more widely accessible price), that's still 300k crowns per 7500 energy; at least to me, that's STILL a rather absurd amount.

So, how would this system work, you might ask? Well, the following would have to be true:

1. CE only spawns in certain places and stratums. This is only excepted by:
2. CE ALWAYS has a chance of spawning in Danger Rooms, Energy Gates, and (possibly) after the Third Arena room.

In case 1, the availability of CE would only be from Red chests, in the second stratum of a tier (in other words, only in depths past the clockwork terminal of the tier). This would make it so that, regardless, unless you joined an in-progress party, you would have to spend no less than 30 energy to get CE. That said, later tiers would have a greater return on CE than earlier tiers. This percentage would have to be determined though a lot of research for balance, though a 5% chance in tier 2 of spawning a single CE per red chest seems fair.

In case 2, the entire point of the Danger Rooms would be changed. As Danger Rooms, imo, have currently no point other than to sap your energy, make you nerd rage at silly party members, and give you a very diminished return on your energy spent, I wholeheartedly believe this would be a good option to allow danger rooms to be worth the risk. Think of it like this:

You spend 3 energy to get into the danger room. In general, you walk out with some interesting materials, and around a few hundred crowns. As of this morning when the price was 6500, every 3 energy you spent was around 200 crowns used. Danger rooms, very often, are as their namesake, very dangerous; so much to where it often isn't worth it, with all the potential for death (especially on the gremlin and wolver room). If any extra energy is spent, that's more money out the window, and by then, you already are committed to the room.

If energy was a potential drop from danger rooms (even so much as to cover the cost of the energy gate itself to get in), it would balance out the risk. If you could turn 3 mist energy, into 3 crystal energy, wouldn't you? I know I would at every chance I got!

Likewise, this can be a misleading trap, and an energy sink; something that three rings itself can benefit from, because, as I said before, once you are in a danger room, as we all know, you are committed to it. Not many would want to return to haven with the lure of treasure so close. Still, for those good players that can do danger rooms without dying, the room itself would reward you with potential energy. Even if you get skunked on energy, you still get your typical danger room faire, and get money to possibly cover it; this just actually rewards players for going in, rather than passing by the gate going "LULZ ENERGY GATE" (I myself did that 4 times on tier 3 last night. Most danger rooms I've ever seen, I swear).

Also, that goes for just your typical "Energy Gate In front of Treasure" rooms; I would also allow energy to spawn from those. As is now, the 40 crowns you typically make from them doesn't make the gates worth it in the least, and make them better to be ignored and skipped.

Finally, I would only allow the third treasure room of an arena drop energy, and at a low chance (in any depth). Arenas are meant to be difficult, but rewarding. This would follow the same sort of principle as the danger rooms, since many players will go through 2 rooms, and skip on past the third. This way, the lure of energy can draw more players to do the third room, and, likewise, possibly sink their perfectly good energy into reviving (which, as I said before, is a good thing for 3 rings).

So, this is my modest proposal. Even minor amounts of energy to be dropped would suffice. As is now, we have to only rely on the crowns we get for energy, which is a very seller-manipulated market. This way, the game itself can take at least a very minor measure of control over the fluctuating markets.

At any rate, my in game characters are Mandolin and Quesodillia. Say "hi" if you ever see me around!

IGN: Sparck
#193

Lots of people here seem extremely focused on the superficial aspects of supply and demand, coming up with various suggestions to fix crown surplus and CE shortage but not ways to address why they exist.

Copperwire’s #190 touched on one of the 3 main problems I addressed in my earlier post, that CE has become illiquid and there’s no motivation for hoarders to sell (good job Copperwire!)

So without further ado, here’s a list of ideas that won’t work and the reasoning behind it:

Lowering lift costs

This will simply increase the crown per mist energy return, and will instead raise the price of CE accordingly.

Increase the mist energy regeneration rate

Same as above, will increase the crowns produced by mist energy and will raise the price of CE accordingly.

Change the crowns awarded per floor

Same as above, will increase the crowns produced by mist energy and will raise the price of CE accordingly.

Mist tanks purchasable with crowns

Same as above, will increase the crowns produced by mist energy and will raise the price of CE accordingly. This would also create a vicious cycle as people buy a tank, run floors, then buy another tank with the crowns they just earned.

Increase the mist energy cap

Same as above, will increase the crowns produced by mist energy and will raise the price of CE accordingly. People will simply create more alt accounts to exploit this change.

Change CE auction block size

This won’t change the base price of CE and will add to confusion as people calculate the crown per CE price for every auction. Most people currently already ask players nearby for sales of small amounts of CE.

Showing the average CE price for last 24 hr/week/month

People mostly bid on energy when they need it, and would still bid higher to get it sooner. Remember, low bids are quickly eclipsed.

Increase the trading fee from 2% to X%

The additional cost will be passed along to the buyer, resulting in increased prices. This also does not address those manipulating prices as they will never actually sell most of their bids.

Charge the trading fee up front

This will dramatically reduce the amount of CE being sold. The seller’s CE is essentially frozen until the auction ends as they potentially have a chance to sell without their trading fee going to waste so long as the auction is up. CE sellers will just end up accepting the highest bid to guarantee sale, but this still would not address manipulators who would increase the bids.

Reechee’s separate CE / Crown system

Overhauling the entire currency system is impractical as much as it is impossible from a customer service standpoint. Randomization of pricing combined with unavailability of funds and ever increasing “interest” being paid out would destabilize the economy and piss a lot of people off.

Stop mass / rage crafting

This activity benefits new players more than the increase in price caused by the additional demand on CE. This type of CE consumption is encouraged, as it gets players to use instead of hoard CE.

Ability to create CE without having to pay

Not only is this in direct opposition to the design of the game, but it will devalue everything while causing mass inflation for crowns. Crafting costs will initially be reduced thanks to savings in CE, so demand for mats and a few more crowns will increase accordingly. Swordstones for 1000 crowns each? No thanks.

Convert left over mist energy into CE through banking, etc

This will encourage players to NOT play, and will in turn decrease the number of people buying and therefore supplying CE. This is further complicated by the alt armies some people possess that would game the system.

Set a market price with variance threshold

1)The database could only remember so many sales, so let’s assume the game remembers average price for the last 24 hours.

2)A couple wealthy people come along determined to make a profit on CE. They buy 100 auctions at 5,000 crowns each (500,000 crowns total)

3)The wealthy person then commence driving the price up and bidding maximum values day over day during peak playing (and hence selling) times. They keep their bids on top all the time, forcing other bids higher. They don’t need to win any more auctions, just keep prices high with a disproportional amount of high bids forcing others higher.

4)The database trends upwards at an increasing rate until the price ceiling is hit. Everyone bidding is willing to pay this amount, but there is surplus demand. The wealthy people then sell off the CE they bought to satisfy this excess demand (think of it just like scalping tickets).

Implement a per trade fee on CE

This does not encourage hoarders to move their stockpiles and further promotes buy and hold behavior.

In post #154, one of my suggestions was to make Mist Tanks buyable (in exchange for cr).

This idea has received some support (#166) and some criticism (#215), the latter of which I'd like to address.

#215: "[The problem is that this] will increase the crowns produced by mist energy and will raise the price of CE accordingly. This would also create a vicious cycle as people buy a tank, run floors, then buy another tank with the crowns they just earned."

The whole point is to make it so that people can run more floors without trading for CE. Again, the Mist Tanks would provide a good and popular crown sink for players who want to delve more than 10 floors in a 22-hour period. As a crown sink, they would have crowns leaving the SK world, helping to offset the resulting influx of crowns entering the SK world (earned by running floors).

For example, suppose an average good run costs 100 energy and produces 7K cr, and that's what people run for profit. If Mist Tanks were buyable at, say, 6K cr, people would have the option of buying them to do multiple runs in a day, for a net gain of just 1K cr (plus mats/heat) in exchange for their time. Their playtime would not be limited by energy market rates. Is this really so much worse than having Mist players do a single run for 7K cr, and log off? (A compromise could be limiting the number Mist Tank purchases per account per day.)

CE prices would not skyrocket, as post #215 claims; quite the opposite. This is because the demand for CE would drop dramatically. People who just want to delve additional floors would not at that moment need CE; Mist Tanks would suffice. Additionally, the demand for crowns would increase, because they would have greater value. Both these factors would ensure that the CE:cr ratio does not continue to shoot out of control.

And although this may prevent CE prices from skyrocketing, it would also guarantee that CE value would never drop below the price of a Mist Tank, as 100 CE is by nature more valuable than a Mist Tank. CE has no overflow issue (like there is when using a Mist Tank when ME is nonzero), and more importantly CE would remain the only way to craft high-level gear or purchase slot upgrades.

People have always been able to exchange crowns for CE (through the energy market or trade); this would just make a way for players to exchange (fewer) crowns for ME.

IGN: Couture
#154 #167 #217

** How to fix the problem **

requirements:

- 100KCE + between 10-100 players
- Time
- Trust and honesty between players
- The desire to return CE prices to a bargain.

** how to do it**

-people are paired up (1 buyer, 1 seller) TEAM 1.
-within each team of 2, 1 person sells all their CE at the current rate. eg 7000cr per 100CE
-1 person sells all their CE at the buying bids rate ( exchange CE for crowns tab.)
-in effect 1 person just made 700kcr if they sold 10KCE and another just 'lost' 10KCE for less than 700KCr
- from the player sellign his CE at a loss this drives down prices from 6800 bid price to 6000cr per 100.
-if they have more CE they can bring the bidding prices down more.

Once team 1 has completed its job team 2 gets to work
Team 2. ( 1 buyer, 1 seller).
-This team works in reverse to team 1.
-1 person sells all their CE for 700kCR again.
-person 2 makes a wall on the selling ce side, of 3500cr /100CE ( this is a 10000 post wall.)
-the person who made the 700KCr for sellign at the peak, now buys the cheaper ce of 3500Cr /100 on the buying bid side....
-Thus bringing prices down... drastically.

These numbers are just examples. and this is the only way i see fit for players to do anything... it would require not many players if they are rich enough and all of 10minutes to complete... also, for any player that does this they actually make a profit for helping out, so its a win win situation.

- The end. ( CE prices returned to normal )

EDIT: This would also make people who participated make a large profit, and make all who drove prices up 'lose' money, so now the upper hand is to the people who want low ce prices not hgh ones.

So for anyone who say, oh the prices will rocket again, i dont think they will, since the players just made double their CE makign it much easier for them to combat it the second time round, or the third, if you catch them off guard they will not be able to recover their losses in effect and thus granting the good seekers an advantage :)

Gratz Tennispro =)

Grats Tennispro,

You do have a number of good ideas that help with the player base and player satisfaction. However Sinxeno, I'd like to continue the discussion as I can only be satisfied with a long term solution especially to the issues at hand. While a free elevator with no crowns, promotional lift prices, and other advertising can affect the demand for CE slightly and would definitely improve satisfaction, we're still left with issues concerning price manipulation and inflation that inhibit 3*+ progress.

~Sparck
#193 #215

@kevomatic - I don't really think people that have CE would like the price fixed. I was under the assumption that it'd be limited to buying 1 per day or something like that, but if you don't have any restrictions I would imagine everyone would essentially become F2P until they needed to craft a 3*+ item, which would become the only use for CE. I don't think relegating it to a single use would be very good for OOO, do you?

Right now, selling energy is taxed 2%

Increase that % if the seller sells Ce for over a certain price. (say, 5k just for kicks.) perhaps over 5k, % increases to 10%. after 6k, maybe 15%. this is all arbitrary, but it seems like an elegant solution: Why sell something if more of your profit margin is disappearing? There would be a certain point where the tax cost would be in direct equilibrium with profit made: should you sell it for more, it is coming out of your pocket, and is actually causing you to lose money. Any price point under that, and you are still making some kind of money.

Right now this is a free market. to reign in a free market, there needs to be some sort of regulation. you need to provide some incentive to keep prices stable, but leave the market still relatively free as far as price points.

Yes, I know its too late for the prize, but its my solution nonetheless.

Not sure if it has been suggested, but I think that a good idea would be to attribute each lot to the player that listed it, that way, people can see who is trying to manipulate the market, and choose or not choose to boycott them.

!!!TO ALL FREE PLAYERS!!!

The rising cost for CE is really about "Free players vs Paying players."

If you need to play as a free player, you will need CE for everything.
If you are a paying player, you will need Crowns for crafting.

Here's my idea to bring the cost of Crystal Energy down.

Supply and Demand.

Flood the market with more CE and reduce Crowns.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. STOP using CE for lifts, instead use 100 mist energy. (this will save you energy)
2. STOP crafting items if you already have 5* gears. (this will save you energy)
4. SELL items for Crowns, do not accept CE. (the buyer has a lot of CE, this will make them sell their CE for crowns to craft items.)
5. You must buy CE even at the current price BUT do not sell them. (you will now have more CE and the seller who has a lot of CE now has less).

So the theory, take away CE from the rich (paying customers) and make them buy more crowns.
The goal is to have the free players have more Energy and the paying players having less.
Of course, they will buy more with cash but it will come to the point where they will get ridiculously too expensive to worth the trouble.
There will be exceptions, the super rich will still try to raise the cost but if we "the free players" can form a big barrier against them .. they will become ineffective.

In the end, this will work if there's more free players vs paying players.

Good luck!

where is your answer? i can't find in preview page

Seriously, this thread is incredibly dumb given the immense amount of people complaining about the system. Hello have you never heard of backing soft currency with hard currency? I have been playing PP six years and we never have this many people complaining about doubloon prices. The game is meant to benefit people who pay to play, how else is OOO supposed to make money? I am a free player but I am not going to complain about how to fix a good system like a moron. If energy prices go up, it means either more free players are playing or there is less people paying to play. Which is good for OOO because that means there is more incentive to buy energy. Energy sells for 6k? Buy energy you can make more selling it. Energy prices is 6k for a free player, how else am I supposed to get energy? Buy it. Free players complaining about other people paying for them to play the game is incredibly annoying.

Prices are going to remain low because a lot of steam players like to buy their energy with cash. There is no fix to the system because it is a great system.

Why is this thread still around?

Explain to me how I have no idea? I may have said I am a free player but I recently bought $10 worth of energy just to craft some. Do I really care if energy goes back up? No not really, if it does I can sell my excess energy for a lot more. If it goes down yay I can do Vana runs and make some crowns off that.

@wrs1864

There still is huge doubloon sinks on PP. Items you buy on PP do not always make it so you make more poe, definitely. The still is a huge sinking of doubloons because unlike this game, when you buy something on PP it goes away in 30 days so you continuously have to buy more, unless it is something like ships. When you are a new player on that game sometimes it can take a long time just to get 5 dubs.

That being said, I do agree if they want more stability there needs to be larger crown sinks. They did announce new Gremlin traders in Haven sometime this month so maybe that will be a crown sink?

Win post^

I think the post above is crap because it assumes you need to pay to play the game. I have been playing this game for free up until a week ago and I could play as many levels as I wanted in a day. The game is completely free if that is how you want it to be. Lets see your first day they give you a total of what at least 200 mist energy? The starting energy and I believe you get mist upon reaching Haven. Sure first week you may have to wait till the next day each day until you get good enough armor for T2. Once you hit T2 a full run will pay for the energy cost and give you a profit. If you want to play 2+ hours in a day on this game then yeah you may want to pay just in case you don't make enough to buy more energy.

Taking paying for lifts out is a bad idea. It would make this game incredibly quick to complete everything. You could play for a week and have 5 star everything. CE prices would skyrocket because everyone would have so many crowns to craft anything they wanted because they would be in the clockworks all day collecting crowns.

This isn't a perfect solution, but keeping CE prices low would be easier if people would stop bumping the price up by 5, 10, or 40 crowns at a time.

Yes. Seriously. I've just sat there and watched the market, and while SELLING CE always seems to go *only* one CR lower with each drop in price, each INCREASE in price on the BUYING side increases completely unnecessarily. If you're going to post a bit that's higher than anyone else's, just aim for 1CR higher.

That's all.

1CR only.

You don't need to be 40CR higher to get the next energy sale. 1CR will do it, and you'll shave a little bit off of the cost.

Seriously, every time someone bumps the price up 40CR, the next idiot thinks that they have to do it too, and soon you've got a spread or prices that are easily 100CR apart shown in the five lines of prices. And then the next idiot thinks "Oh god, I have to post an even higher price now!"

Hell, just flat out *posting buy orders to the market* rather than just clicking the "Buy best deal" button will help keep prices down. Buying from the sell-market increases prices, and unnecessarily paying too much increases the prices.

This isn't a perfect solution, but keeping CE prices low would be easier if people would stop bumping the price up by 5, 10, or 40 crowns at a time.

This is a rational behavior, though. What you have is people who value CE above the current market price for it. They want to buy now, not later, when they believe the price will be higher. If they post only one crown higher than the current highest offer, there's a good chance someone will simply post one more crown higher than that, possibly even the person they just outbid. By jumping to the next multiple of 50 or whatever, they hope to discourage people from competing with them, and instead compete beneath them. I won't wait for someone else's offer to be consumed before mine has a chance to be taken just to save 2 crowns, but I might hold off if they're willing to pay 100 crowns for the privilege of being first in line.

Just like the inability of Energy buyers to fix the price of CE can easily be described as a Prisoner's Dilemma game, so are outbidding strategies similar to a game of Chicken, where the goal is to convince the other player(s) that you would rather everyone fail (that is, pay a higher price) then let someone else succeed (that is, let someone else have the energy now while you wait and hope your bid doesn't get swallowed up). Really, things might be better off if people were willing to outbid in larger increments: the better to scare away competitors instead of simply encouraging everyone to nudge up their bids by a pittance of crowns.

You're absolutely right about the "buy best deal" buttons, though. Those are probably the major cause of the gap between CE buyers and sellers.

I posted my full thoughts on: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/14908

I honestly don't believe any of my suggested solutions would lower the amount of CE purchased in the game as long as it takes a F2P person a long long time to get to 5* equips.

Summary:
1) Crown/CE rates are being thrown off because crowns leave the game much slower than CE does. Example: A person who has most of their needs gets 10000 crowns from an average day of play and possibly spends around 200 CE. If they don't need recipes today, the only way they are likely losing 10000 crowns is through crafting stuff that probably also costs 1600-2000 CE (a lot more than an average day's spending). Suggestions: Crown taxes, significantly increase CE sale crown penalty, dramatically raise crafting costs, crown fees for frequent activities like AH searches and regular trades. NEW suggestion: Make future unbinding costs crowns-only. If unbinding cost should roughly equal crafting cost, then Grand Total = total crown craft cost + 3-5x NPC value of materials + (amount of crowns earned in average level * total CE craft cost / 10).

2) 1* to 3* material costs for crafting need to increase because there are too many in the game (which then get turned into crowns, exacerbating #1 problem). Alternatively, lower these mats' drop rates, increase their NPC rates (dodgy solution), or allow them to be converted to mist energy in bulk.

3) Even out expected crowns gained in any level of a given depth--probably not relevant (was this done in RJ Depth 16 already?)

4) Trouble with token item UVs--not relevant

5) Make AH fees progressive-percentage (since higher-star folks can afford it better), and possibly cut a break for the 0* and 1* mat sales entirely (so newbies participate).

6) Keeping elite equips at least mostly inaccessible to newcomers is essential to a good game. Since this game doesn't do it by levels (and even heat, post-Unbinding update), make crafting perilous. Having either the equip or the recipe possibly be lost would both keep the unbound elite items rare AND help decrease the effective crown value of a person, facilitating #1.

7) In the interest of making UVs "Ultra Valuable" like they should have always been: Either make them more common/powerful or cause them to be earned by some means other than at crafting time. My idea: Have opportunities to choose to apply UV to something you equipped through playing a tier at the end of that tier, from a random pool and with outcome favorability being a function of heat earned. A side benefit for game revenue might be that more folks in endgame would be playing and burning CE to earn or craft their UVs.

Yes, I know the contest is over; perhaps the OP should revise the title and keep the discussion going!